Advanced Gutenberg Review — an Enhanced Experience With the New WordPress Editor

You might be aware of the fact that WordPress is going to introduce a revamped experience of content creation and editing through an all-new and enhanced editor called the Gutenberg in version 5.0.

Gutenberg is still in its beta and the features which have been out till now tells that it will completely revolutionize the way you create content in WordPress. It is also known as the WordPress Block Editor because the content you create using it is considered as a set of blocks. So anything you create whether it’s a text, paragraph, image or what not it’s going to be a block within Gutenberg.

Recently, I came across this intuitive plugin in the WordPress repository which has not only adopted Gutenberg but also helps to enhance your experience with it. It’s called the Advanced Gutenberg and this plugin includes a bunch of useful and effective functionalities which takes Gutenberg Editor to the next level.

In this review, I will try to cover all you need to know about the Advanced Gutenberg plugin. Moreover, I’ll be discussing how this plugin strengthens and adds value to the Gutenberg Editor. So let’s get started!

💯 Advanced Gutenberg

Advanced Gutenberg plugin was introduced to improve the performance and ability of Gutenberg Editor. This plugin is absolutely free and is quite a new addition since it is just 8 months old. It was developed by some amazing folks at JoomUnited.

JoomUnited is primarily focused on providing WordPress and Joomla solutions for everyone. Their products always boost productivity, performance and site management. The incredible team behind JoomUnited is led by a brilliant mind – Damien Barrere.

Advanced Gutenberg provides you the bunch of additional and advanced blocks, enhanced gallery, editor controls and the ability to apply custom CSS. It also allows you to manage the user roles and restrict the controls for each user.

Let’s see how easily you can access these features and start using them right away!

🔧 Setup & Configuration

Step #0

If you don’t have Gutenberg editor running on your site, then this is the Step #0 for you.

Step #1

To get the Gutenberg Editor you need to install the Gutenberg plugin available in the WordPress repository. Or you can install it by navigating to the Plugins > Add New and search for Gutenberg. Hit the Install button next to it and then Activate it.

Step #2

Once you have Gutenberg editor up and running, you can get the Advanced Gutenberg plugin from the WordPress repository and install it by uploading the plugin file.

To install it from your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Plugins > Add New. Make a search for Advanced Gutenberg. Hit the Install Now button and then activate the plugin.

With all this, you are done and ready to explore the enhanced and amazing features built within Advanced Gutenberg plugin.

🍕 Features

Advanced Gutenberg plugin provides the features and functionalities which are kinda missing in the default plugin. Let’s explore these enhancements to the Gutenberg Editor in depth.

👊 Content Summary

This block automatically generates the summary based on the title structure of your content. It helps your users to easily navigate to the specific heading or topic of your post.

💹 Advanced List Block

This block allows you to create lists having fancy icons and text. You can easily customize the properties of list icons and text from the Block tab located at the right side of the editor. In this way, you can create really attractive and elegant lists for your post.

👁 Advanced Button Block

This block gives you the ability to create visually enhanced and attractive buttons for your site. We all know that buttons play an integral role in site management especially if you have tempting CTA (Call to Action) for your product or service.

😬 Advanced Image Block

As the name suggests, this type of advanced block allows you to play around with the images which you add in your content. Using this block you can easily resize your image and add customized text, colors, overlay, etc.

⌚️ Counter Block

The Counter Block in the Advanced Gutenberg plugin is used to add cool counters to your post. You can create these counters really easily and quickly.

Apart from these, some other amazing blocks available within Advanced Gutenberg plugin are:

🗺 Map Block: This block loads the Google Maps with the ability to customizeposition, zoom, tooltip and much more.

📊 Advanced Table Block: You can create elegant and fully customized tables using this block.

🎹 Accordion Block: This block gives you the ability to display content in an accordion interface which is usually collapsable.

🎼 Tabs Block: With this block, you can easily create tabs for your content.

📹 Advanced Video Block: Using this block you can customize both local as well as embedded videos.

🎨 Separator: Allows you to add stylized separators.

🔗 Social Links Block: This block uses customized icons to connect to your various social networks.

👪 User Profiles

User profiles management is one of the powerful features offered by Advanced Gutenberg plugin. These help you set some rules, permissions or even restrictions for certain user roles or even for a specific user.

In this way, you can completely control the access of various blocks or editing tools by each user. Advanced Gutenberg gives an ability to the site administrator to create several user profiles and apply it to the several user roles or users.

To benefit from this functionality, navigate to the Advanced Gutenberg > Profiles from your WordPress dashboard to get access to the User Profiles. Here you can find the list of previously created profiles which you can edit by simply clicking over the certain profile.

You can also create a new profile using the New Profile button right at the top. Now under Blocks List tab, you can simply enable/disable the access of each block. Just like I disabled the blocks Advanced Video and Social Links for the current profile.

Next, under the Profile Attribution tab, you can give a title to your profile. From here you can also activate this profile for the specific users or user roles. Once you are done hit the Save button and your created profile will be saved.

🎨 Custom Styles

Custom Styles give you the ability to add new styles or modify the pre-built styles within the Advanced Gutenberg plugin. For each custom style class, you can set the identification color to distinguish it from rest of classes.

Besides this, you can customize the CSS for each class and can easily notice its effect within the Preview section underneath. This makes it easier to apply the CSS changes on the go!

💬 Translation

Advanced Gutenberg plugin allows you to translate this plugin in your own native language. You can access the Translation tab from the Advanced Gutenberg menu.

📌 Configuration

You can easily configure the default settings associated with the enhanced blocks packed within the Advanced Gutenberg plugin. There are also some general configurations which you can change as per your need.

Simply head over to the Advanced Gutenberg > Configuration. Here, you will get some general settings related to the gallery, images, and blocks.

If you switch to the Default Blocks Config tab, you will get a very well organized screen having a list of advanced blocks built in this plugin. You can click the gear icon next to the name of each block to configure it.

This will open a pop-up window having various options which you can change easily.

📒 Documentation & Support

Advanced Gutenberg plugin comes with really informative and helpful documentation. It covers all the aspects you need to get started with this plugin. Here you can find the various guides about installation, update and common features packed within this plugin.

If you face any issue regarding this plugin which is not documented then you can reach out to the support team for help. There’s a support policy that you should go through before submitting your issue.

🙌 Wrap Up

Advanced Gutenberg plugin is a super dope enhancement to the Gutenberg Editor. It provides quite handy and advanced blocks to improve your content creation experience. Besides this, you can easily apply custom styles and CSS on the go!

The thing which makes it stand unique to its competitors is the ability to manages user profiles and roles. As you can completely control and restrict the editor tools for various users.

You can take your Gutenberg Editor to the next level without paying a single penny. This will make you fully prepared for the changes which are going to be shipped within WordPress 5.0. So trying out Advanced Gutenberg right now is highly recommended.

Maedah Batool is a WordPress Core Contributor, Technical Dev Manager and a part-time Journalist. She created a tech-training startup called FinkTanks where she has taught 1,000+ girls how to code with WordPress.